Home Bakeries II...because the holidays are coming!

 As luck would have it, I was headed back to Even Dough one Saturday when I spotted the out-the-door-and-down-the-patio line and instead re-headed myself to the Carrboro Farmer’s Market.  It was a beautiful day, so the Market was crowded, but I am a fast shopper, even there.  I’d picked out greens, radishes, and catfish from the coast when, on the way out, I spied a baker unpacking his wares.  

 

Box Turtle Bakery, his sign said, inviting me to get my morning treat there.  I waited a few minutes for him to set up, then chose a raisin bread with only four ingredients.  

 

 

It was still warm, so I threw the rest of my haul on the counter and cut a slice.  Wow.  Here was a home baker who clearly made his few ingredients shine.  That freshness and texture reminded me of my brother Charles’ sour dough bread, when he and my nephew Chet were still baking it (Chet’s become a baker of other good things now, but I’ll get to him  in a few paragraphs…).

 

 

I found Abraham online soon after, and asked if I could have a few words with and about him.  “I’m busy this week,” he wrote, “but just come to next Saturday’s market [he only bakes for that morning] and we can talk between customers.”

Here,” he told me when I returned the next week.  “Try this sour-dough with apricots.  It’s got some spelt in it.” (Yes, I went home with it.)

How did he get started?  Guess.  In his family’s kitchen, where, growing up, his large family congregated.  “It wasn’t like we were taught to cook,” he explained.  “Just if you were around the kitchen, you were given something to do.”

 

Eventually, inspired by his mother’s bread-baking, he turned his dining room into a place to explore breads and sources for the kind of carefully grown ingredients.

 

 

His sources are local and/or specialty farm-based.  That’s what interests him the most…how flours and grains can act, how they can enhance a loaf. From the way he talked about it, it’s clear that experimenting with this flour and that, this combination and that, is what baking is about for him. And finding just the right people growing just the right stuff.

What’s your favorite thing to bake? I asked him.  He looked around a minute, then nodded.  “English muffins.” He pointed to the batch I hadn’t noticed in another bin.  “I began in the usual way, but then I kept trying to make them better.  Eventually, I got a metal worker to form grids, and now I just roll the dough over the grids and they bake in those separations.”  One of the ways to success is knowing who, like you, know how.   

 

 

And then there’s my nephew Chet. Like Abraham and like many of us from a large family, who bake and cook (some are better bakers than cooks, and vice versa), Chet took to it, and does both well.

My brother’s sour dough bread, for instance, passed along to Chet when it was getting difficult for his father to manage the heavy work of it, especially the enameled iron pots where the dough rose and baked.  They baked loaves at a time; there was always something in progress…starters, mixers, risings, bakings of the sour dough that could include cheese, herbs, olives…even chocolate.  Chet meanwhile had been cooking meals for his family, too, as they were busy with work and health issues.  Here’s his story:

 

“I began thinking about food seriously enough to make it and work with it when I was a teenager.  At our store, I was selling gas grills; so I began using them, playing around with hamburger…something basic, straightforward.  Maybe some hot dogs, then chicken, then steak.“  

 

Like Abraham, Chet thinks cooking is all experimentation.  “What learning with meat taught me was temperature control…useful across the board.  Also to apply patience, attention and an eye for detail. “ He began to include spices and ingredients that inspired him to try different ways of making what would ordinarily be…ordinary.   

“I don’t do it only for the science, though,” Chet affirms. “I want to see people’s faces change, tasting something I make and knowing this is special.  It’s a way to share myself creatively.”

I will vouch for that.  I’m a particular fan of his sweet potato enchiladas, mushroom soup, roasted cauliflower, and Morning Glory breakfast cake.  And if Chet is appearing at a family feast, my grandson’s first question is, “Is he bringing that mushroom pate′?” That one will be gone in minutes.

These days he’s begun his cottage baking business, turning out pies, cakes, cookies, and lately confections, too. Still,  he finds himself still eagerly learning and experimenting.   

He loves the challenge.   

 

           

                                                                

He began making chocolates and toffee at first because his mother couldn’t eat soy.  

 

“Soy is in everything!” he says. “Especially chocolate.  So I tracked down soy-free bars and learned how to temper it properly.  Temperature is everything there.  It’s the same with nuts…pull pecans ten degrees too late and it’s scorched, but right on the edge of done? Gorgeous.”

 

“My whole recipe is high-fat butter, organic cane sugar, a bit of salt, soy-free chocolate and well-roasted pecans. No corn syrup, no junk, no stabilizers.  A few simple ingredients, nothing artificial.  I want to remind people of what good food is and what it can be.”

 

He’s becoming as popular at farmer’s markets and pop-up tables around Cary and Raleigh as he is around our tables.  And the holidays are coming...

 

 

Home Bakeries

 In the oven this morning are my version of rugula, those filled little pastries we think of for holidays.  Our Rosh HaShanah dinner is already passed, but there are plenty of other times to enjoy them during this new year week.  Ah! There goes the timer.  Be right back.

Hm.  Though well-filled, they came a little flat…my fault for letting the pastry get too warm as I put them together.  All that raisin, honey, apple and cinnamon inside smells delicious.  When they cool, I’ll cut them up hoping the slices hold together. (I’m sure they will get eaten anyway.)

Home baking like mine is one thing…not likely to get farther than my own kitchen and table, unless I have to bring something to a potluck.  But out there are those who can really be called “Bakers”, busy in their own kitchens making wonderful breads and desserts as a calling and a vocation. Lately, I've been thinking about them.

I.

In Paris, I am particularly fond of the almond croissants and breads at the Le Pan au Naturel.  It's diagonally across from the Catacombs, where I would never go, and around the corner from the Marche’ DaGuerre, where I would usually head for cheeses and fruits, etc., the stuff of picnics in the Tuilleries or Parc Luxembourg.

 

But a few weeks ago one morning,  four thousand miles west across the Atlantic, on my way back from delivering my neighborhood's generous bags for PORCH's pantry, I took a little detour through Carrboro and found a morning croissant even better (sorry, you Francophiles...but it's true). In a charming, airy, open place were curls of lightness alongside little sweet pastries and creams, coffee breads, elongated filled bagels (the new thing), and cookies.  

 

Even Dough (named because dough is mostly an even way of baking) is the new kitchen of Chef Meitel, whose began as a home baker, specializing in French pastries.  In her earliest days in business, one had to find her online, by accident or through word-of-mouth.  Last year, she found a home on one of the trendiest streets in Carrboro with enough space for her bigger following, and renovated it extensively, continuing online sales from there.

It wasn't long, however, before, as Meitel admitted, "People would come in and tell me, 'You need to open a café here!'"  

So she did.  My friend Jim (Francophile of all Francophiles), her champion all along, enthusiastically alerted his Gaulic-inclined friends. That PORCH morning seemed perfect for a treat and a chance to see what the cafe offered.

First, a bright, open house with good coffee.  Drip.  And all the other good coffeehouse coffees and teas, along with a pleasant, smart barista to serve it up. That’s the easy part.  Choosing among the array in the clear cases is more difficult.   “One of everything, please?”

You can take your drink and whatever you couldn’t do without to one of the tables inside or outside to the open leafy patio.  As early in the morning as you get there, lines form right behind you.

The sloping ramps to the door and patio are a gift for people like me, as well as people not like me, mothers with strollers, customers on crutches, shoppers with bundles and tired walkers...one each of whom joined me that morning.  

               

 Inside or outside, spaces are big enough to gather with friends, or tuck into a corner for solitude. That first morning, a breeze waving the long pods of the catalpa trees overhead, I sat longer than necessary.  Why not? Before I left, I got a few minutes with the busy chef, who didn’t mind my taking these photos.   You should join me. It’s my new place to unwind.

II.

Now, it happens that Meitel’s journey toward this adventure is one that my sister Mary Ellen has just begun.  She, too, has begun a home bakery, Mimi Bakes Best, certified to offer her desserts by order or at pop-ups at the local fresh-air markets.  Part of my pleasure in seeing Even Dough was imagining Mary Ellen's future, too.  

           

As I sat there, I thought of the parallels.  Mary Ellen doesn't do French pastries, but she's is in another town where people appreciate a good dessert, or an oatmeal or chocolate cookie in the afternoon, or a carrot or zucchini bread in the morning.  She also  fills orders for birthday cakes and holiday pies, using pure, often organic ingredients. 

She loves learning what people like and already has her fans...people who find her by word-of-mouth or taste-of-mouth quickly become part of that club. 

Culinary magic happens generation by generation.  It certainly happened to Mary Ellen, who began baking early in her teens, making desserts for other, including a cake iced with crosshatching that amazed and puzzled my mother' gourmet club friends.  I wish I had a photo of that!

Baking for family, with family, seems to be the key to the way home bakeries grow.  It didn’t take much to imagine that Even Dough must have begun pretty much like that.  On the Even Dough site, I found this note: "Meitel Cohen began her culinary journey in her grandmother's tiny, magical kitchen. "

Of course, there's more to it than genes or a chance to sit on the counter and lick the bowl, the way in my kitchen, too, bakers begin.

 

I'm pretty sure that Meitel would tell my sister what she already knows:  it's not a quick road without a few lumps and messes and a lot of hard work.  But there are so many triumphs along the way. 

Home bakeries, like cottage industries of all kinds, take a certain courage and know-how, not to mention stamina, flexibility, and a willingness to see a little further along the way.  Yet, look around at the independence fostered in that arena, the individualism that elbows aside the more common, standard wares, the pride on the invisible part of the label that pronounces, "I made that." I'm always amazed at those values that produce talent we can enjoy the fruits of.  

Here's wishing those dedicated bakers a vision of the road ahead that brings for them and their customers a sweet success.

And a sweet new year to you all.

 

One sliced nicely; the other crumbs a bit…and sure enough, they were finished by afternoon tea.

 P.S.  Stay tuned for more Home Bakeries and other masters of the kitchen...I'm having a lot of fun finding them.

 

Beautiful Day

If only all the world were like this day...airy, bright, cool, surprise of an earliest hint of fall, a gift.  The windows are open, the porch door too, and breezes turn the fans a little faster.

The other morning, I wandered into an old neighborhood about a mile up the hill; I hadn't walked it in a while.  It's as quiet as ours and the houses are as variously aged and designed and inhabited, but the gardens are more precious and wonderful to tour on such a day.  My favorite is a small cottage only sometimes lived in...the woman who owns it won't sell it (I think she thinks of her life with her husband there), but often stays nearer her son on the other side of the country.  Or so I hear.  She has growing along the curb the most curious pretty ground cover...her garden helper told me the name once, but I've forgotten now.

  Street by street I was passed, coming and going, by young women and men jogging before class or work.  Most returned my good morning as they zipped on; only a few, probably new around here, seem startled by the greeting, managing only a crimped smile.  My neighbors and I try our best to socialize them, though it's amazing that at 19 or 20 they haven't been taught better...see a neighbor, say hello.

There! I'm showing my age ("these young people!").  It brings me back to a teenaged memory:  my great-aunt decrying the antics of the early ‘sixties "troublemakers" on the summer street (only singing and partying). When I protested, my uncle chided me for being rude to her.  Some things don't change by generation, do they?

Speaking of age, three friends from my college years...friends of my youth, as Alice Munro aptly entitled one of her stories...came to visit me from their more northern homes.  Nine of us still keep in random touch, but this was a treat!  I imagined where to take them in the few days they'd be here, what might entertain them (walks through campus? art? gardens? shopping?), making lists, making menus, collecting flight information, making small gifts they could remember this visit by.  True to form, they had also thought of gifts to commemorate our years and interests.

      

We didn't do half the things I'd planned, as short visits go, but we talked around the table, on the streets, in the car, of old days and people, of course, but also sharing our present tenses and dipping our toes into the future. We're all 80 (one almost) this year; it seems a turning point to take note of (if not the only one) in life.   

   

 

We are so far mostly healthy, in varying degrees, still ambulatory, with interests that keep mind and body afloat.  We work or volunteer, travel or tend to family. Interestingly, we all have different takes on 80...some worried by it, some seeing it as a time to take hold, some (like me) finding it freeing.  For one of us, age doesn’t compute: “I feel like 60, not 80!”

 Then there are all those things, sight seen and unseen, nearby and far out of reach, that change what comes, what is.  We keep up as well as we can with those.

Here’s the last time we were all except one together (that's my mother, at the top right, hosting us).  I think about such friends I’ve made along the way and what it means to be gathering still...here, there, anywhere…a  reminder of who one was, but also who one has become...the same but different, a little worse for wear but better too.  We are already planning next year’s reunion.

In a few days, September...officially Fall in most places.  Here, leaves already fall (from little rain, I’m afraid), and mornings appear with that mist that signals change.  

As season by season dashes by, we also keep in touch with a hope that change comes for the better.

 

On my mind

On a rushing-around Saturday, I am taking a few minutes to think.  It’s a gray, cool day…a gift on this extraordinarily hot, muggy summer…suitable for getting small chores done, but also for a chance to zone out with the porch breezes.

I’ve just been to the new exhibit at the Muse Art Gallery in Carrboro, where last month I and two friends hung our work.  We took ours down a few days ago, so I thought I would visit the art that is showing after us.

What I walked in on were stunningly beautiful, intricate quilts by a Dutch woman, Marga de Bruijn, who has lived in this area for forty some years.  There are whole histories embedded in her work…personal as well as global… color and line and the gradations of perspective and emotion evolve into events we should know and remember.  Quilting is a way she shows us what’s on her mind.

What I left the gallery with was a mind full of my own. I’m still thinking of the first quilt I saw as I entered the gallery corridor...Fibonacci A. easy to recognize the way strips of color and pattern contrive to spell a clear picture one cannot mistake.

 

More important, though, I’m thinking about the power of art to bring forth truth in ways that the flat, black and white icons we call words cannot.

Her quilts are about the travesties, tragedies, legends, inventions, meditations and sturdiness in the world.  Take a look at more of her storied work here:

https://www.mymusescardshop.co/muse-gallery

By construction, Marga de Bruijn spares nothing as she quilts.  Her fabrics, created by other artists whom she names as collaborators, she carefully synchronizes to bring out exactly the tone and resonance she means.  Her stitching reminds me of the notes and spaces of musical codes.  It seems odd to use such terms on such tactile makings, but these quilts do, really, sing to me.

And humble me.  I think of my scraps of paper and glue, washes of paint, cuts of metal, fallen twigs and broken pieces, and how, for me, they conspire to, at least, a semblance of thought that might or might not have risen to consciousness.  I love fine material…no doubt there.  Thread and fabric, hand stitches calm me into sewing; once in a while, embroidery becomes part of my art.

It's the deliberateness, formality of structure, intensity of purpose that Marga de Bruijn brings to her creations that amaze me, most of all the expanse of vision she creates with.

If I sound envious, be assured that it is admiration, purely.  This room full of a woman’s eye and hand…in them is an understanding and sympathy for the world I cannot help but admire.  What art, what meaning, what eye-, ear- and mind-opening because of her.